Back to School Lunch, Silent Movie-Style!

I have been poking around the cooking section of the internet, as I tend to do, and have noticed that everyone is gearing up with back to school lunch ideas. Well, I intend to make your kid the trendiest retro geek in the whole district with this lunch menu!

I’ve been cooking recipes attributed to and inspired by silent stars for quite some time and I will be sharing four that I think will work well for a school day. Qualification: I was once a kid.

Adrian’s Tea Wafers

Iconic movie costume designer Adrian tried to claim these as a sophisticated snack but this recipe is 100% pure kid-friendly. Peanut butter and banana broiled with cinnamon and sugar on a rye crisp? A dozen of them to go, please!

Allergy Note: Substitute the nut butter of your choice if peanuts are not an option.

The Theda Bara Sandwich

Pickles can sometimes be a questionable component for kids’ lunches but this is such a tasty sandwich that it’s worth a shot. Inspired by Theda Bara’s spicy, not-for-kids persona, this sandwich has ham and pickles and peppers. The recipe says to serve it hot but room temp is just fine.

Vegetarian/Vegan Variation: Use vegan ham deli slices and your favorite non-egg mayo OR fine cubes of marinated tofu to provide the salt and tang for the sandwich.

Wallace Reid Divinity Salad

Grapes are in season in my neck of the woods and citrus is always easy to obtain, so this is a perfect back to school fruit salad. Pack the whipped cream separately from the salad for maximum freshness. I used walnuts but sunflower or pumpkin seeds would be tasty as well.

Sidney Drew’s Peanut Cookies

These are sooooooo good! Light and fresh and not at all cloying, as peanut butter cookies tend to be. The yield for the recipe is quite low, so you’ll want to double or triple it if you plan to use these for multiple days.

Vegan Variation: This recipe uses very little dairy, so you should be able to swap out the cow milk for almond, coconut or whatever you like with no issues. And, obviously, margarine for the butter. I have not tested this using a flax egg but it should work just fine.

Allergy Note: Because this recipe uses peanuts and not peanut butter, you should be able to incorporate a different nut with zero issues. These cookies are not very sweet, so if you use something like walnuts, you might want to sprinkle some sugar on top to compensate.

I hope you had fun and I hope you give some of these recipes a try! If you do, be sure to let me know the results.

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6 Replies to “Back to School Lunch, Silent Movie-Style!”

Kids or adults, anybody’s bag lunch would be enriched by that Theda Bara Sandwich (pickles on the side for me, please!). Is it hard to get children to eat pimento these days, I wonder? It always was with me 🙂

Side Note: we just received our second Milestone dvd order today, Beyond the Rocks and Cut to the Chase (Charley Chase collection). Very happy to start watching them both on this laid-back Labor Day weekend!

Fun Fact: When I ate stuffed olives, I used to feed the pimentos to my Siamese cat. He loved them. (He also slurped up spaghetti with sauce. He was very strange.) If pimentos don’t work for the young-uns, perhaps roasted bell peppers?

That Theda Bara sandwich looks just about perfect (hold the mayo), except that it will probably use up my allowable salt intake for the day, so I’d be eating fruit and tomatoes for the rest of the day.

Side note: I just got a copy of the three disc version of The Jazz Singer (thank you, Ebay!), and now the big decision is: does it go in the to be watched silent movie pile, or the sound movie to be watched pile?

Well, I suppose I could start a part talkie pile, but it would only have The Jazz Singer and The First Auto in it (and that film only had one word of spoken dialogue, if I remember correctly). I went on Wikipedia to see the list of Warner’s part talkies, but the sheer number of lost films depressed me and I stopped.

Movie Book Pick of the Week

Styling the Stars: Lost Treasures from the Twentieth Century Fox Archive by Angela Cartwright and Tom McLaren. A lavish look at the fashions of Fox. It’s pretty much talkies but absolutely gorgeous to look at.

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